Using the Detailed Auditing Policy

Learn how to enable detailed auditing of message size, bindings, and contracts.

About Policies Managing Policies About Operational Policies

For information about using policies in the context of the developer portal, see Business Policies.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Creating a Detailed Auditing Policy
  3. Configuring the Detailed Auditing Policy
  4. Attaching the Policy
  5. Detailed Auditing Policy: use cases
    1. Detailed Auditing: Audit Entire Message and Message Metrics
    2. Detailed Auditing on failure, Basic Auditing on success

Introduction

The Detailed Auditing Policy is an out-of-the-box policy that is part of the Policy Manager default installation. It is an instance of the Auditing Service Policy. It provides detailed auditing of messages and records the message metrics in the Monitoring > Logs tab as well as the messages of each exchange. The policy is located in the Policies folder of the root organization.

Note: In versions prior to 2019.0.0, the platform did not support attaching multiple auditing policies to a service or API; for example, Basic Auditing policy or Detailed Auditing policy. In 2019.0.0 and later you can set up Basic Auditing for successful messages and Detailed Auditing for error conditions.

The following message metrics are recorded:

  • Input Message: Audits Input Message content.
  • Output Message: Audits Output Message content.
  • Fault Message: Audits Fault Message content.
  • Message Size: Audits the size of messages in the exchange.
  • Binding: Audits binding information.
  • Transport: Audits Transport information.
  • Contract: Audits the contract governing a message.

The following identities are audited:

  • Consumer: Audits consumer identity sent with a request message.
  • End User: Audits end-user identity sent with a request message.

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Creating a Detailed Auditing Policy

The first step in creating a policy is to define the basic policy information.

To add an operational policy
  1. Go to Workbench > Browse > Organization, and select Policies > Operational Policies. The Policies Summary is displayed.
  2. Click Add Policy.
  3. Choose the policy type and click Next.
  4. Specify a name (required) and description (optional) and click Finish. At the Completion Summary, click Close. The Add Policy Wizard creates a draft policy instance that you can then configure on the Policy Details page.

For more information, see Add Policy.

At this point, you've created the policy, but it doesn't do anything. The next step is to configure the policy details. See Configuring a Detailed Auditing Policy below.

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Configuring the Detailed Auditing Policy

Once you've created the policy, you can configure the policy details that determine how the policy works. Then you can activate the policy so that it can be used.

To configure a Detailed Auditing policy in Policy Manager
  1. In the Organization Tree, find the level where the policy was defined. Click to select.
  2. In the center pane, in the Auditing Service Policy section, click Modify. The Modify Auditing Service Policy overlay is displayed, as shown below.

    Modify Auditing Service Policy

  3. Specify values as needed, such as specific transport headers to exclude.

    Note: For explanations of the individual fields, see Configuring an Auditing Service Policy. The Basic Auditing Policy and Detailed Auditing Policy are both pre-configured out-of-the-box instances of the Auditing Service Policy that are part of the default installation.

  4. Click Apply.

Now that the policy is defined, you can activate it and start using it. On the right, under Actions, choose Activate Policy.

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Attaching the Policy

To use the Detailed Auditing Policy, go to the Policies folder in the Root Organization and attach the policy to a web service, binding, or binding operation. Then, go to the Services > Monitoring section to view the results for Logs, Real Time Charts, and Historical Charts.

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Detailed Auditing Policy: use cases

This section includes the following usage scenario for the Detailed Auditing Policy:

Detailed Auditing: Audit Entire Message and Message Metrics

Audit entire message and message metrics of each exchange in usage logs of Monitoring tab.

  1. Create a physical service in the Policy Manager Management Console using Create Physical Service.
  2. Provide service details and finish the wizard.
  3. Using Virtualize Service, virtualize and host the physical service on Network Director (ND1), and assign a name (for example, Vs1).
  4. Attach the Detailed Auditing Policy located in the Root Organization Policies folder to the Vs1 service in Service Details > Policy Attachments > Operational Policies.
  5. Send requests from the application/client to the Vs1 service.
  6. The details of the usage logs show the recorded information for each exchange.

    Detailed Auditing policy use case: log details

    The fields that are recorded in each exchange are:

    1. Message Size
    2. Input Message
    3. Output Message
    4. Fault Message
    5. Transport
    6. Contract
    7. Binding
    8. Identities: Consumer/End-User

    Detailed Auditing policy use case: Usage Detail tab

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Detailed Auditing on failure, Basic Auditing on success

API Platform Version: 2019.0.0 and later

In versions prior to 2019.0.0, the platform did not support attaching multiple auditing policies to a service or API; for example, Basic Auditing policy or Detailed Auditing policy. In 2019.0.0 and later you can set up Basic Auditing for successful messages and Detailed Auditing for error conditions, as shown below.

Basic Auditing policy

Default configuration is shown below. No changes needed.

Basic Auditing on Success

Detailed Auditing

In the below scenario, in the developer portal:

  1. Navigate to Organizations > organization > Policies. Choose the Detailed Auditing policy and choose Start New Version.
  2. Choose Filter Messages. The default is Exchanges resulting in an error. Save.
  3. Activate the policy.

The resulting policy configuration is shown below.

Detailed Auditing on Failure

Now, attach these two policies to your API.

With this configuration, you'll have minimal log entries for successful messages. However, any unsuccessful messages will have all message details (subject to configuration settings).

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